Courage writ large in a steady hand

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On the memorial stone gateposts of Condobolin Public School, in
NSW's Central West, are inscribed 83 names. Nine from the bottom
are Arthur and Will Varley. Every Australian country town
commemorates its sons of the Great War. Condobolin salutes, among
others, the Varley brothers.

Both survived the Western Front madness of 1914-18. Will Varley
joined the British Army. Arthur Varley was a junior officer with
the 45th battalion of the Australian Imperial Force. But Arthur did
more than survive. When he came home in June 1919, aged 25, he came
with two Military Crosses for "conspicuous gallantry" on the Somme,
in 1917 and 1918, and two mentions in dispatches.

Arthur Varley was an authentic war hero.

In 1940 two Varleys again went to war, this time father and son.
Arthur Varley was now 47 and living comfortably 700 kilometres
north of Condobolin, in Inverell, a twice-married stock and station
agent with two sons - John Ashton Varley, 19, and Robert Ashton
Varley, 17. Their mother, Arthur's beloved Linda Adelaide, had died
giving birth in 1925 to his daughter, Linda Ashton. The serial
"Ashton" middle name was in memory of Arthur Varley's feisty
grandmother, Eliza Ashton, and 60 years later there are Varleys
right across NSW and Queensland, if you know where to look, some
still proudly bearing the "Ashton" inheritance.

When World War II came, and Arthur Varley still could not resist
the appeal of King and Country, both his sons, Shore old boys,
wanted to join up, too. Their father forbade it. John - known to
everyone as "Jack" - he allowed. To younger son, Robert, he said
no. One had to stay home, he insisted. All three of the Varley men
could not leave their wife/stepmother and daughter/sister alone in
wartime.

Robert obeyed his father.

At Sydney's Victoria Barracks, the 2/18th Battalion was being
raised as part of the army's new 8th Division. Arthur Varley had
returned to Australia in 1919 a highly decorated captain, having
gone to Europe in 1915, aged 21, a junior lieutenant. Now, with his
"keen blue eyes and sparsely built frame, which accentuated his
military bearing", he was made a lieutenant-colonel and given
command of the 2/18th. Son Jack became a junior lieutenant in the
2/19th. Both were in Singapore when Japan bombed Pearl Harbour on
December 7, 1941, simultaneously loosing a firestorm in the
south-west Pacific with massed troop landings in the Philippines,
Indo-China and Malaya.

Three things happened to write this story.

In fierce fighting, as 20,000 troops of the raw Australian 8th
Division of citizen soldiers sought unavailingly to stop Japan's
unstoppable military assault down the Malay Peninsula, Jack Varley
emulated his father on the Somme 24 years earlier. He was cited for
a Military Cross for "conspicuous gallantry and leadership, in
complete disregard for his personal safety" as Japanese troops, at
Bakri and Parit Sulong, threatened to "overwhelm" the company of
2/19th diggers under his command in January 1942.

The second thing that happened was Arthur Varley began a diary.
Its first entry is dated December 1, 1941 - six days before Japan's
day of infamy changed the course of 20th-century history. This
entry said, simply: "[2/18th] Battalion, in the Palm Beach area,
continuing with defensive work. At 1132 hours, code word received
from brigade headquarters indicating number 2 degree of readiness."
Next day Varley recorded: "General Blamey [commander-in-chief of
all Australian forces] visited. I met him at brigade headquarters
[in Singapore] at 1200."

The diary is now in the archives of the Australian War Memorial
in Canberra. There are six volumes, each the size of a small
notebook. Two are rough made, originally held together by string.
All contain an extraordinary account - in their meticulous detail,
their fairness, their mostly dispassionate language, their
day-to-day thoroughness in recounting life often of the most
appalling kind, in their revealing window into a man of his time in
the first half of a violent century. Varley, a man of obvious
personal integrity, belonged to the officer class, socially and
intellectually. He was first and last a military man.

The third thing that shaped this story was the British surrender
of Singapore on February 15, 1942. That infamous capitulation
delivered 130,000 military forces, including 17,000 Australians,
into Japanese POW camps for the rest of the war. Arthur and Jack
Varley were among them. Their captivity is what makes the Varley
diaries such a significant record.

Bill Sweeting, now 86, is the only survivor of the group of
journalists and historians who wrote the 22 volumes on World War II
for Australia's official war histories. Sweeting penned the
harrowing, 200-page chapter on Australian POWs. We know so much
about the infamous Thai-Burma railway, he says, and the 40,000 POWs
of all nationalities who built it, mainly because of Varley's
diaries. How Varley managed it we can only speculate. All the
principals are dead. The War Memorial could not - or would not -
tell me. Even the Varley family does not know.

Arthur Varley's self-imposed task was massive.

From his first diary entry on December 1, 1941, until his last,
on March 26, 1944, there are 70,000 words, all but the first two
months in longhand, written in great secrecy, presumably each
night, not ever missing a day in four different camps - in Changi
in Singapore, in Tavoy Thanbyuzayat in Burma, in Kanchanaburi in
Thailand - until the last few months, when Varley grouped days
together and gaps appear in the chronology.

To scan the diaries, though, all these years later, Varley's
impeccable handwriting for the most part still pristine, is to have
the hairs prickle the back of the neck as you think of that brave
man, nib pen in hand, meticulously hunched over his little book,
night after night, month after month, for more than two years.

Varley would have been shot had he ever been caught or the
diaries found. Neither happened. Not even Jack Varley knew his
father's secret. Sometime in mid-1944 the diaries were buried. They
were not recovered until July 1946. Their detail was used in
Japanese war crimes trials. One man involved in their recovery was
Major Herbert Francis Dick, a Melbourne solicitor and, like Varley,
an 8th Division POW. But how the diaries came into his hands we can
only guess.

Dick handed the diaries to Australian military authorities in
Singapore. He obviously knew the background - but he is dead.
Herbert Dick died 20 years ago, aged 77, in 1985, in his Melbourne
suburban home. Somebody, somewhere, I hope will surface to tell the
story.

Some edited diary excerpts:

June 6, 1942 [at Tavoy, in Burma]: "Informed at 1500 hrs that 8
Australian escapees to be shot at 1700 hrs. Protests unavailing. I
was ordered out of the room and into Lt. Shiina's car. The 8 men
followed in lorry to north side of Tavoi [sic] aerodrome where 8
graves had been dug. The men were led blindfolded, and sat down
with hands tied behind back to stake. I asked, for the fourth time,
to get messages for their family. Refused. Religious rites refused.
I was forced to stand by and watch them shot - 2 guards to each
man, two shots fired by each. Death was instantaneous. The spirit
of these 8 Australians was wonderful. They all spoke cheerio and
good luck to each other. A truly courageous end."

June 24: "Have witnessed some remarkably beautiful sunsets and
sunrises lately. It does one good to spend half an hour in the
evening enjoying the beauties of nature. One has nothing else to
enjoy. Jack's batman gave me three tobacco leaves for the pipe.
Pretty rotten stuff. No sugar or milk in tea for months. The
porridge (from ground rice) would actually be good with milk and I
propose to introduce it to the family on my return."

July 16: "Dreamt of home last night and learnt Bob [his younger
son] was in some sort of trouble. We all try to picture how long it
will be before we see our loved ones again. I can't see it
happening for about 12 months."

August 16: "Linda's birthday. 17 today, God bless her."

May 14, 1943 [at Thanbyuzayat]: "Today marks the anniversary of
A force (3000 diggers) leaving Changi under my command [as
Brigadier]. My regular visits around the hospital depressing. Men
emaciated, men crippled with disease, men losing their sight, men
coughing up great worms, men covered with tropical ulcers. Numerous
rats. White men going to work in a 'g' string and no footwear.
Through all this, one must maintain calm and optimism. Still, this
is war and we deplore [being] POW. Our morale is good and our chins
are up."

Fairytale endings are rare in real life.

Lieutenant Robert Varley enlisted on August 28, 1942, after he
learned his father and elder brother were prisoners of war. He was
killed, aged 21, on April 2, 1945, near Lae in New Guinea. His
father never knew. Seven months earlier, in September 1944, the US
submarine Pampanito sank the Royko Maru - bound for Nagasaki with
1200 POWs, including 650 Australians - in the South China Sea. More
than 100 Australians survived. Brigadier Albert Leslie Varley, MC
and bar, did not. He died on the eve of his 51st birthday.

Jack Varley, MC, is alive and well, aged 84, in Nambour,
Queensland. Linda Ford, nee Varley, lives in Wagga Wagga, a widow.
Her husband, also a POW, died last August, ironically on the
anniversary of Japan's surrender. They married 59 years ago, the
day after Anzac Day, 1946. Think of the Varleys on Monday. They
mirror Australian families everywhere.

A crass way to commemorate

Peter and Lynn Desmond of Brisbane are travelling Australia by
car. At 9.34 on Wednesday night Peter Desmond became angry enough
to stop, leap out and email: "I am moved by your writing on the
wanton, ignorant abuse of Anzac Cove for political gain. One aspect
of that abuse is generally not recognised. Before the 2000 Anzac
Cove commemoration, attended by Howard, Beazley and NZ's Helen
Clark, a 'commemoration site' was constructed for the expected
15,000 pilgrims.

"The site was so built that people have their backs to the
cliffs which faced the Anzacs as dawn rose and they assaulted
across the beach in the first light. In other words, people were
forced to look out to sea, as did the Turks, rather than watch the
sun's rays strike the awesome Sphinx feature, as did the Anzacs.
While the light strikes the cliffs, the sea remains in darkness.
Pilgrims are blinded by floodlights which illuminate the 'stage'
where the politicians are filmed making their speeches.

"Only when the speeches are over do people realise that daylight
has now bathed the whole scene beyond the floodlights. Pilgrims are
cheated of the view faced by the Anzacs as they came ashore because
of the ignorance of the designers of the 'commemoration site'. And
they are cheated, by the floodlights, of the very experience of
dawn at Gallipoli.

"I am a returned serviceman with three periods of war service. I
was at Gallipoli on Anzac Day in 2000. I have never seen the dawn
service as appropriate for political involvement. It should be
personal and anonymous! That is why we don't wear our medals at the
dawn service. It is out of respect for the dead. You don't wear
medals before the dead; they have earned so much more than
medals.

"Incidentally, do you know the origin of the gesture of placing
one's hand over one's left breast before a cenotaph? It was done to
cover one's medals, out of respect. It is ironic that politicians
who have earned no medals now place their right hand over
non-existent medals. It is crass and ignorant. And it is offensive
because it is so crass and ignorant.

"If politicians are to play a part, it should be at the
mid-morning service at Lone Pine, not the dawn service. In 2000 I
was appalled at the floodlights, the military band playing popular
music, the singers and other 'entertainment'. From 1am the scene
was floodlit, uniformed servicepeople were wandering around looking
untidy and aimless, there was 'entertainment'. One could not simply
reflect on the awesome place, history and meaning of the
pilgrimage, such a dream of mine for 20 years.

"It was a bloody circus."

Margaret Colebrook, AM, of Roseville asks why the descendants of
World War I veterans have, since last year, been shuffled to the
end of the Sydney Anzac Day march when, previously, they'd been
allowed near the front. There are now just too many of you,
Margaret. For the first time this year Sydney's march will have no
World War I veteran. NSW's very last has died since last Anzac Day.
Relatives have been sent to the rear in deference to World War II
veterans, who will lead the march.

Finally, if John Howard's Government understands so little of
Gallipoli, over and above a photo opportunity, perhaps Leon
Gellert's 12-line masterpiece, Anzac Cove, written in 1918,
might remind them of what they've so wantonly incited.

There's a lonely stretch of hillocks
There's a beach asleep and drear
There's a battered, broken fort beside the sea.
There are sunken, trampled graves
And a little rotting pier
And winding paths that wind unceasingly.
There's a torn and silent valley
There's a tiny rivulet
With some blood upon the stones beside its mouth.
There are lines of buried bones
There's an unpaid waiting debt
There's a sound of gentle sobbing in the South.